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Authors: Mishka Shubaly
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work just to disappear after dinner into his basement wood shop and a six-pack of Budweiser tall boys. I missed him, and I expressed it by constantly pestering him when he was around.
I couldnât have been more than six, shadowing him around his basement workshop, when he finally tried to engage me. He plopped me in an office chair in front of a computer. I still remember the green flashing cursor on screen and the built-in keyboard, a cutting-edge machine at the time. My father explained to me that a computer was so smart that it could solve any problem.
Okay, fine, I had a problem for it. I laboriously typed into the computer âHow do you work?â
My father saw it coming and began hemming and hawing before Iâd written my third word. Then, when Iâd finally finished, he began trying to explain himself out of the corner Iâd painted him into, telling me I hadnât asked the computer the question in a language it could understand.
I burst into tears. I had beaten his challenge and found a question the computer couldnât answer. My father couldnât stand that I had outwitted him, so heâd changed the rules. He had cheated.
When I was in second grade, I asked my father to help me design a trap to kill Jason Frederick, the class bully. On my instructions, he drew a deep pit full of jagged blades concealed by a thin camouflage covering. Then he drew Jason Frederick approaching, holding an ice cream cone. Then he drew a little holder on the side of the pit to catch Jasonâs ice cream cone when he fell in. I decided then and there that my dad was an asshole. This was a serious situation, Jason had to be dealt with, and my father was mocking me, his only son! On that day, I wrote him off, and I held fast to my disappointment in him.
As the winter wore on, it became clear that my father intended not just to shuck off his wife of nineteen years like an ill-fitting coat but to ditch the children too. Had he ever liked me? My father clearly preferred Tatyana over meâshe was quieter, tidier, more orderly, less wild. Tashina had only come to live with us at the age of four, when it had become clear that her father, my motherâs brother, couldnât afford to take good care of her. Though my father didnât have the disdain for Tashina that he had for me, they had never really bonded. It occurred to me that when Chuong moved out to New Hampshire with us, my father stopped trying to connect with his wifeâs extended brood and resigned himself to beinga stranger in his own home. Had he felt anything other than relief when Chuong had run away?
My fatherâs exit had been so convenient, so seamless for him that it seemed impossible he hadnât planned it. Heâd walked into a new life in which his family didnât exist, had never existed. He didnât even need to flee us. We had been unwritten.
Months out of a marriage of nearly twenty years, he already had a new woman. Who, we didnât know, and of course he played dumb. But we had proof of his betrayal. My mother showed me a letter she found in the back of a book he had been reading. It wasnât addressed to anyone, and it wasnât signed, but it was written in his hand, so loving, so tender that he could not have been writing to my mother. I was dying to confront him about it, but Mom swore me to secrecyâhe could not know that I knew.
My parents struggled to keep the bills paid with two kids in college as they sorted out the divorce. My mother had been out of the workforce for eighteen years, raising us kids: she had no resume, no professional references, no marketable skills. Still, nothing was going to stand in the way of taking care of her children. âYou do what must be done,â she had told us as children, and weâd seen her live those words, time and again.
âWell, if thereâs one thing I know how to do after raising you kids, itâs baking. Cookies, muffins, bread
I couldnât have been more than six, shadowing him around his basement workshop, when he finally tried to engage me. He plopped me in an office chair in front of a computer. I still remember the green flashing cursor on screen and the built-in keyboard, a cutting-edge machine at the time. My father explained to me that a computer was so smart that it could solve any problem.
Okay, fine, I had a problem for it. I laboriously typed into the computer âHow do you work?â
My father saw it coming and began hemming and hawing before Iâd written my third word. Then, when Iâd finally finished, he began trying to explain himself out of the corner Iâd painted him into, telling me I hadnât asked the computer the question in a language it could understand.
I burst into tears. I had beaten his challenge and found a question the computer couldnât answer. My father couldnât stand that I had outwitted him, so heâd changed the rules. He had cheated.
When I was in second grade, I asked my father to help me design a trap to kill Jason Frederick, the class bully. On my instructions, he drew a deep pit full of jagged blades concealed by a thin camouflage covering. Then he drew Jason Frederick approaching, holding an ice cream cone. Then he drew a little holder on the side of the pit to catch Jasonâs ice cream cone when he fell in. I decided then and there that my dad was an asshole. This was a serious situation, Jason had to be dealt with, and my father was mocking me, his only son! On that day, I wrote him off, and I held fast to my disappointment in him.
As the winter wore on, it became clear that my father intended not just to shuck off his wife of nineteen years like an ill-fitting coat but to ditch the children too. Had he ever liked me? My father clearly preferred Tatyana over meâshe was quieter, tidier, more orderly, less wild. Tashina had only come to live with us at the age of four, when it had become clear that her father, my motherâs brother, couldnât afford to take good care of her. Though my father didnât have the disdain for Tashina that he had for me, they had never really bonded. It occurred to me that when Chuong moved out to New Hampshire with us, my father stopped trying to connect with his wifeâs extended brood and resigned himself to beinga stranger in his own home. Had he felt anything other than relief when Chuong had run away?
My fatherâs exit had been so convenient, so seamless for him that it seemed impossible he hadnât planned it. Heâd walked into a new life in which his family didnât exist, had never existed. He didnât even need to flee us. We had been unwritten.
Months out of a marriage of nearly twenty years, he already had a new woman. Who, we didnât know, and of course he played dumb. But we had proof of his betrayal. My mother showed me a letter she found in the back of a book he had been reading. It wasnât addressed to anyone, and it wasnât signed, but it was written in his hand, so loving, so tender that he could not have been writing to my mother. I was dying to confront him about it, but Mom swore me to secrecyâhe could not know that I knew.
My parents struggled to keep the bills paid with two kids in college as they sorted out the divorce. My mother had been out of the workforce for eighteen years, raising us kids: she had no resume, no professional references, no marketable skills. Still, nothing was going to stand in the way of taking care of her children. âYou do what must be done,â she had told us as children, and weâd seen her live those words, time and again.
âWell, if thereâs one thing I know how to do after raising you kids, itâs baking. Cookies, muffins, bread
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